Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on urban development during his trip to St Petersburg
Vladimir Putin' s introductory speech:
Regional development is often the focus of discussion in the federal government, in one way or another. St Petersburg is also a special region. We have a series of important, large-scale projects here, bound to influence the city's development, the life of its residents, and even the Northwestern District and the whole country.
I am primarily referring to infrastructure-related projects, such as roads, bridges and tunnels. There is one very important project - a dam with all the necessary navigation and water passage facilities and a bypass road, which has been under construction for too long.
I have heard reports from the departments concerned that unfortunately, the costs have grown considerably, due to the need to install cutting-edge fire safety and other kinds of security equipment.
So my first priority is to understand how reasonable the request is for additional financing, because as I said, the increase is significant.
Second, I would like to know when the construction can be completed. As far as I understand, the project could be completed in 2011, provided the necessary financing is available on a timely basis. So I would like to discuss this issue first.
Next, we provided the municipal budget with additional resources last year, and the year before last. We agreed then that the additional resources would go to very specific projects - to move the city's Naval Museum to a new building, to refurbish (practically rebuild) the Vaganova Ballet Academy, and some other things.
I would like us to tackle all of these issues today. Let's begin with the dam and the tunnel.
